Douglas Todd: Who’s happier, the poor or the rich?

Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun columnist02.14.2014

Happiness is not an easy concept to measure and results will repend on the question asked, how it is asked and cultural background of the person being asked. Yet most polls that purport to measure happiness are reported without such necessary caveats.

The news, entertainment and tourist world are full of people from the West who travel to developing countries and report back that the poor, whether tribespeople or housemaids, “seem much happier” than us in the West.

And Western media publish numerous stories about global surveys that appear to “scientifically” validate that people in poor countries are inclined to feel happier than those in affluent nations.

This major international polling firm has sent out a news release declaring: “Indonesia scores the happiest out of the 24 countries surveyed with over half (55 per cent) of citizens reporting they are ‘very happy’ followed by India (41), Mexico (38), Brazil (33), South Africa (26) . . . .”

What is going on here?

The Ipsos results are in stark contrast with the United Nations 2013 World Happiness Report. The UN study shows that people in stable northern countries tend to be happier than those in such relatively poor regions of the Global South.

The UN’s annual report found the most happy residents were in Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden. Sixth place was filled by Canada.

In dramatic contrast to the Ipsos survey, the UN study ranked the residents of Indonesia as only the 76th happiest in the world. The people of India came in a dismal 111th. South Africans were just 96th.

Where does the truth lie?

The answer is important — since policy-makers make major economic and political decisions based on what they know about what satisfies citizens.

And polls that show people in the well-off West that residents of the Global South seem to happier might convince us not to worry about taking responsibility for global economic inequality.

They can justify stingy foreign aid budgets and make us avoid looking at how wealth in the Global North is in part built upon exploiting resources and workers in the South.

So it’s worth pointing out why the Ipsos happiness results are misleading.

They’re not absolutely wrong. But they are based on a narrow question and a limited range of countries (only 24 compared to the UN’s 156).

The Ipsos survey has another crucial weakness: It depends on Internet polling — and therefore it only includes relatively affluent people.

If one looks beyond the initial supposedly surprising results in the Ipsos news release, one discovers its five most “happy” countries are also those with extremely low Internet use. In other words, Ipsos did not come close to measuring the feelings of the majority of residents in the relatively struggling nations it ranked as the most happy.

In regard to No. 1-ranked Indonesia, Ipsos acknowledged in the fine print of its methodology that only one in five Indonesians use the Internet.

In India, which came in second for “very happy” residents, only 11 per cent are on the Internet. In Mexico, which came in third, just 36 per cent use the web.

When I asked Ipsos senior research manager Keren Gottfried, of Toronto, about whether poor people tend to be happier, she acknowledged, “I’m not quite sure these numbers bear that out.”

Even though Gottfried stood by the significance of the findings, she confirmed the results measure only the happiness of people she called educated, urban “upper-deck consumer citizens.”

John Helliwell, a University of B.C. economics professor emeritus and one of the authors of the UN’s World Happiness Report, diplomatically suggested there is “no news” in the Ipsos study.

The Ipsos poll is limited not only because it measures only “those above the digital divide,” said Helliwell, an expert on statistical methods for measuring humans’ moods, memories and overall life evaluations.

The Ipsos survey also asked only a simple question —respondents were asked to rate themselves on four levels, from “very happy” to “not happy at all.” Helliwell believes that mainly measures a fleeting emotion.

To obtain a more accurate understanding of happiness, the UN report is based on several global polls (including by Gallup and the World Values Survey), in which interviewers generally sit with people and ask them their level of happiness on at least a 10-point scale.

Even these kinds of wide-ranging surveys are often mis-reported by Western media outlets. Based on previous Gallup surveys, for instance, North American journalists have claimed Latin Americans are the happiest.

But the reporters don’t clarify that Latin Americans are more inclined than most people, for cultural reasons, to emphasize their positive emotions. On its own, the Gallup poll doesn’t necessarily show that Latin Americans, overall, are the most satisfied.

The critical thing about the UN World Happiness Report is that it makes a point of going beyond measuring “transient changes in emotion.”

It asks people about overall “life satisfaction.” This line of questioning probes whether people feel they have the social conditions that can make them content.

“Life satisfaction” questions reveal whether people feel they have livable incomes, the resources to support their physical and (especially) mental health, a sense of social cooperation, freedom from corrupt officials and communities governed by the rule of law.

“Respondents to surveys clearly recognize the difference between happiness as an emotion and happiness in the sense of life satisfaction,” says the World Happiness Report.

“The responses of individuals to these different questions are highly distinct.

A very poor person might report himself to be happy emotionally at a specific time, while also reporting a much lower sense of happiness with life as a whole; and indeed, people living in extreme poverty do express low levels of happiness with life as a whole.

Such answers should spur our societies to work harder to end extreme poverty.”

Helliwell put it this way in an interview: “There are lots of happy poor people — and lots of unhappy poor people.”

Indeed, some in the South report doing reasonably well. The UN’s happiness report lists the residents of Panama as 15th happiest, with Mexicans 16th and Venezuelans 20th.

What about the three Global South countries that provide the largest source of immigrants to Canada? They’re fairly low on happiness. Residents of Mainland China are ranked 93rd, Filipinos 92nd and Indians 111th.

Of equal interest to Helliwell, however, is that “the 10 richest countries in the world are not the happiest.” The U.S., for instance, has the world’s most powerful economy and the most multimillionaires. But Americans only come in 26th on the UN index.

This shows that, above a certain level, extreme wealth does not tend to increase life satisfaction. Most people need a moderate income, Helliwell says, but community factors are just as important for happiness.

What is generally going right in the countries at the top of the UN’s happiness rankings?

The UN results don’t necessarily indicate that Danes, Swiss or Canadians are the richest or poorest — or that they are cheerful people who feel a cultural imperative to put on smiley faces.

Instead, the UN rankings confirm that Canadians retains most of the essential ingredients that go into what makes northern Europeans score high on happiness — decent if unspectacular incomes, a viable social safety net and reasonable community trust.

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